Thursday, 17 May 2012

We’re sick of spin, we’re sick of hype. If you
churn out repetitive and unoriginal content whilst claiming it’s the
best thing since last year’s clone, we’ll stop listening and go
elsewhere (a lot of people already have).

“The best thing since sliced-bread” gives over 3 million hits on a google-search, I wonder how many of those things really are?

There is a theory that for any headline that ends with a question-mark*, the answer is “no”.

“You can tell when a politician is lying, his lips move.” Gets you over 500 hits on Google.

“Don’t believe the hype.” By Public Enemy reached number 18 in the UK chart

“So what?” I hear you ask. Well, we, as a populace,
and hence as customers, are becoming more cynical. Advertising is
pervasive but untrusted, techniques such as having the volume of the
commercial breaks louder than the host programme
and releasing ad campaigns that are designed to be offensive safe in
the knowledge that any ASA activity will be retroactive further heighten
the sense of intrusion.

Programmes such as The X-Factor are routinely
referred to as “glorified karaoke” and the shelf-life of the winners is
generally planned only to last until the next series (anything else is a
bonus).

Media conglomerates have control of so many
different channels that it is easy to find an advertisement for a TV
programme masquerading as an article in a paper owned by the same
company (or vice versa).

We, the customers, have known this for a while but,
with the advent of a truly interactive web, people are finding out how
to route round the hype, the misinformation and the adverts and are
finding their own trusted sources.

Many legacy companies are seeing this as a threat. This loss of control means that their influence is reduced accordingly:

If people are TIVO’ing shows then they’re not watching your expensive adverts

If people aren’t listening to commercial radio they’re not hearing your carefully selected play-list

If people aren’t reading the newspapers then
they’re not reading your trend-setter’s latest must-watch / -read /
-listen to recommendations

But overall spend on entertainment is going up, especially for independents. So where are they getting their recommendations?

Well, the same way that they always did really,
from friends, peers, colleagues, trusted reviewers, fanzines etc. It’s
just that now, most of these are online and can have a far wider
influence than they did previously.

And the reason that people are listening to these
sources is that they respect the opinions and advice given. These new
sources have established a track record on honest and reliable output
that allows people to make a judgement based on
that history.

This is an opportunity, and an easy one to open up.
Most aspects of the content industry have their talent scouts (in one
form or another) who could easily open up a credible dialogue with
potential fans and customers, but very few are
doing so.

More often than not this gap has been filled by amateur / semi-pro bloggers and websites.

Sometimes industries will embrace these new
sources, frequently they will do so in a confused, contradictory and
ultimately litigious fashion.

There are plenty of other examples of fan-supported
sites being closed down for copyright reasons that, ultimately, just
drive people away from legitimate content.

From accounting practices to promotion techniques
the legacy content industries (particularly music and movies) don’t have
a good history of honesty. That’s a gap in the market, that’s an
opportunity.

P.S. As well as my recurring concern about
companies adapting before I’ve finished writing this I sometimes wonder
if I’m going the wrong way with some of my analysis. Fortunately there
is no shortage of regular reminders that reform is
needed, generally in the form of one of the industries taking some
ridiculous legal action. After writing this up last night my vindication
came with this article from techdirt** about how skipping commercials
might be considered illegal.

* e.g. Did radio-active, nazi gerbils kill Elvis in JFK cover-up?

** My go to source for all that is wrong in the Intellectual Property world.